Saturday, July 5, 2008

Cover-ups and conspiracy theories.

We all remember this image. The gold medal "Dream Team" annihilating the competition in the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, Michael Jordan and teammates at the podium, basking in their glory. Now I'm not putting Jordan's patriotism into question, but it's widely known that the flag draped over him was to cover up a Reebok logo. As MJ is a Nike man through and through, he wasn't going to give shine to anyone else, especially with the world watching. No conspiracy here, just fact. Jordan is a businessman.

Fast forward to 2008, Nike is outfitting the Men's USA Basketball team now, and all but one of the players on the squad are Nike or Nike affiliated, (Dwight Howard). The best players who committed to the program are on the squad, so it can be chalked up to coincidence, but is this photo an accident?

First of all, I've never seen this set-up for a team photo before, maybe it was an avant garde photographer, but the standard team shot has the big men in the back row, where his shoes could have easily been covered up. To make matters worse, Coach K is sitting(?), quite conveniently blocking out Howard's Adidas sneaker.